1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a print apparatus and print method in which efficiency of a raster operation is improved according to destination images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Print apparatuses such as color printers and those referred to as all-in-ones, have an interpreting process of analyzing a print command received from a host and for creating a bitmap image. In particular, the interpreting process includes a rendering process of converting analyzed data into a bitmap image. That is, a cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) image or a red, green and blue (RGB) image, which is a color image received via a graphic device interface (GDI), is converted into a bitmap image. Here, in the print apparatuses, the CMYK image is mainly used.
FIG. 1 illustrates a rendering process of a conventional print apparatus.
Referring to FIG. 1, an RGB image or CMYK image 2 is represented in detail with combinations of a source image S indicating a shape of an object to be displayed, a halftone image H indicating inner texture such as a pattern and an attribute of the source image S, and a destination image D indicating a destination of the source image S. Raster operations (ROPs) 3 comprise 256 ROPs defined by logical operations, such as logical AND, logical OR and logical NOT operations, using the combinations of the source image S, the halftone image H and the destination image D. Data, which is stored in a memory 4, corresponding to the source image S, the halftone image H and the destination image D, is computed using the ROPs, and a created bitmap image is output via the memory.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a conventional print apparatus.
Referring to FIG. 2, the conventional print apparatus receives a print command via a graphic device interface (GDI) (not shown). The received print command is analyzed to determine the source image S, the halftone image H and the destination image D by a parser 5 and a decoder 6. An ROP unit 7 performs the ROPs of the analyzed source image S, halftone image H and destination image D, and outputs a bitmap image created as the analysis result via a memory unit 8.
Here, the ROP unit 7 performs the ROPs of the source image, halftone image and destination image data stored in relevant memories regardless of an attribute of the destination image D. Accordingly, the efficiency of the rendering process decreases due to the excessive computation time resulting from the complexity of the ROPs.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method in which the efficiency of a raster operation is improved.